What is a mega yacht? SXM Sint Maarten

People move to the railing, eyes wide, cameras at the ready. Slowly they come, moving forward cautiously through the narrow channel. Oohs and Ahhs can be heard as first one, then another maneuver through the bridge. Cameras go off, people cheer and applaud. It can be consider a national past time in St. Maarten to gather at the Simpson Bay Bridge at 5:3O to raise a glass, daily, to the villas of the sea. The Mega Yachts are back!

Each November marks the beginning of High Season in the Caribbean. The rich, famous and infamous flock to our sandy, sun kissed shores to play in the emerald and indigo waves and to enjoy the wonderful Caribbean climate. Fresh from the Mediterranean summer season, they come on their yachts. Not just any yachts but MEGA yachts.

So what defines a mega yacht? The name ‘mega yacht’ started showing up around the beginning of the 20th century when the super rich began constructing large private yachts for personal pleasure. Examples of early luxury motor yachts include the Cox & King yachts, M/Y (motor yacht) Christina O and M/Y Savarona. Early luxury sailing yachts include Americas Cup classic J class racers like S/Y (sailing yacht) Endeavour and Sir Thomas Lipton's S/Y Shamrock.

There are several different explanations/definitions for mega yacht. Some people consider a boat to be a mega yacht by length, of displacement, or of cost, but it depends on who you talk to. One thing most people seem to agree on is that yacht can be classified as ‘mega’ based on size. Generally any yacht over one hundred feet in length and made with high standards and top quality materials. That’s the simplest way to begin describing a mega yacht. From there, the definitions get a little watery, but there are still general ‘facts’ that qualify yachts as ‘mega’.

Mega yachts are usually privately owned. Some are used exclusively by their private owners, while others are operated part-time or year-round as charter businesses. A large private yacht charter can range from a few tens of thousands of dollars to nearly over a million dollars for one week.  For these high fees, you get a unique experience unlike any other. These yachts are often referred to as floating villas or homes.  Just about anything you can imagine can be found on a ‘mega’, depending on the size of the vessel. What you find onboard these yachts can blow the mind away: helicopters, swimming pools, spas, basketball courts, movie theaters, concert halls, floating golf courses; what an owner decides to put on board is limited only by their imagination. These floating villas also have the advantage of taking passengers to destinations otherwise unreachable by any other means. Mega yachts typically have no real home port, although a yacht must be registered in a port of the country of which it flies the flag. Many times the yacht will have never been to the port!

More recently, over the last decade or two, there has been an increase in the number and popularity of large private luxury yachts, over 24 metres. The number of very large yachts has increased rapidly since the 1990s and increasingly only yachts above around 65 metres (213 ft) stand out among other luxury yachts. Yachts of this size are almost always built to individual commissions and cost tens of millions of dollars! And believe it or not, most super-yachts cost far more than their owners' homes on land, even though those homes are likely to be among the largest and most desirable. Makes it no surprise the owners book charters. Have to pay for those Megas!

As the world's wealthiest compete to keep up with one another, large private yachts are reaching colossal size. Many yacht builders are taking orders for super large mega boats well over 400 feet, 122 meters. Wherever you look today, yachts are straining to escape the bounds of gravity and even at times credibility, and as we try to wrap our minds around these trends, the word that comes to mind isn't super, or mega, but GIGA! These private giants of the seas have begun resembling cruise ships in miniature. A giga yacht is a vessel of 1OO metres of more. That’s over 328 feet! It boggles the mind! Though still fairly rare, giga yachts are getting to be a more common sight. The very largest yachts have begun to incorporate such features as helicopter hangars, indoor swimming pools and even miniature submarines!

What in the name of the High Seas is going on in the yachting world? Big yachts getting bigger-so big they're housing submarines? Big yachts looking like small yachts-enormous versions of what are essentially open and express cruisers. Yards and builders are getting bigger. Heck, even owners are getting bigger, with larger-than-life characters that span the spectrum from American and Arab and Russian and Chinese. Big yachts are getting bigger. I’m not just talking about size, but the price tag gets bigger as well! When you go from 150 feet to 300 feet, it is not twice the yacht, but closer to six times as large in terms of interior volume, tonnage, complexity and cost.

St. Maarten’s waters were recently graced by the one of, if not THE most expensive yacht in the world. The yacht ‘A’, which some said resembled everything from a capsized cruise ship to a submarine, has a price tag of $3OO million dollars. No, that is not a typo. That’s right! The "A" was designed by French architect Philippe Starck and Martin Francis, and built at the Blohm + Voss shipbuilding yard in Hamburg, Germany. It is owned by Russian billionaire Andrey Melnichenko. The yacht includes, among other things: a disco, several pools, lots of Baccarat crystal, a love nook, a helipad and state of the art security. A's trimmings also include six guest suites with moving walls to create four larger suites, each with a stainless-steel whirlpool bath. The master bedroom, located at the top of the watchtower, contains an enormous bed that rotates on a turntable for a panoramic view out all the windows. A also has a hovercraft, a garage, over 100 audio speakers, and more than a dozen plasma TV screens, many of which can be mistaken for mirrors. A's indoors include doors unlocked by electronic finger pads, spotlights, and motion sensors! Ok, take a moment to catch your breath!

Though, for most of us, owning a mega/giga yacht is the stuff of dreams and fantasies, we can still look out our windows and gaze upon them on a nearly daily basis, every high season, letting out dreams set sail on the seas!